mercury (mûr´kye-rê)
noun1.Symbol Hg. A silvery-white
poisonous metallic element, liquid at room temperature and used in thermometers,
barometers, vapor lamps, and batteries
and in the preparation of chemical pesticides. Atomic number 80; atomic
weight 200.59; melting point -38.87°C; boiling point 356.58°C;
specific gravity
13.546 (at 20°C); valence 1, 2. Also called quicksilver.2.Temperature: The mercury
had fallen rapidly by morning.3.Any of several weedy plants
of the genera Mercurialis or Acalypha.

Mercury (mûr´kye-rê)
noun1.Roman Mythology. A god
that served as messenger to the other gods and was himself the god of commerce,
travel, and thievery.2.The smallest of the inner
planets and the one nearest the sun,
having a sidereal period of revolution about the sun of 88.0 days at a
mean distance of 58.3 million kilometers (36.2 million miles) and a mean
radius of approximately 2,414 kilometers (1,500 miles).

Mercury (element), symbol
Hg, metallic element, a liquid at room temperature, with an atomic number
of 80 and an atomic weight of 200.59. Mercury is one of the transition
elements of the periodic table (see Periodic Law). Mercury occurs in its
pure form or combined with silver in small amounts but is found most often
as the sulfide ore cinnabar.

UsesMercury is used in thermometers
and other scientific equipment, including vacuum pumps, barometers, and
electric rectifiers and switches. Mercury vapor is used in lamps as a source
of ultraviolet radiation and in place of steam in the boilers of some turbine
engines. Mercury combines with all the common metals, except iron and platinum,
to form alloys called amalgams.

Mercury PoisoningMercury vapor is acutely
hazardous. Chronic mercury poisoning, which occurs when small amounts of
the metal or its salts are repeatedly swallowed over time, causes irreversible
brain, liver, and kidney damage. Significant quantities of mercury have
been found in some species of fish, arousing concern about uncontrolled
discharge of the metal into the environment.

Mercury (planet)

Mercury (planet), planet closest
to the sun, at an average distance of about 58 million km (about 36 million
mi). Its diameter is 4875 km (3030 mi), and its volume and mass are about
those of Earth. Mercury revolves about the sun in 88 days. Its period of rotation
is 58.7 days, two-thirds of its period of revolution. The planet rotates one
and a half times during each revolution. Mercury is the only planet except Earth
with density and composition close to those of Earth and with a magnetic field.
The planet's outer core must be a liquid iron compound that produces a magnetic
field as it moves. Only an extremely thin atmosphere, containing sodium and
potassium, exists on Mercury, apparently diffusing from the crust of the planet.
Photographs of Mercury's surface show craters and steep cliffs. Temperatures
on Mercury reach about 430° C (about 810° F) on the sunlit side and
about -180° C (about -290° F) on the dark side. Radio telescopes have
identified vast sheets of ice in Mercury's polar regions.

You all know what mercury
looks like-at room temperature it's a silvery liquid that flows,
it's like a mirror. For the alchemists,
and this is just a very short exercise in alchemical thinking, for the
alchemists mercury was mind itself, in a sense, and by tracing through
the steps by which they reached that conclusion you can have a taste of
what alchemical thinking was about. Mercury takes the form of its container.
If I pour mercury into a cup, it takes the shape of the cup, if I pour
it into a test tube, it takes the shape of the test tube. This taking the
shape of its container is a quality of mind and yet here it is present
in a flowing, silvery metal. The other thing is, mercury is a reflecting
surface. You never see mercury, what you see is the world which surrounds
it, which is perfectly reflected in its surface like a moving mirror, you
see. And then if you've ever, as a child, I mean I have no idea how toxic
this process
is, but I spent a lot of time
as a child hounding my grandfather for his hearing aid batteries
which I would then smash with a hammer and get the mercury out and collect
it in little bottles and carry it around with me. Well, the wonderful thing
about mercury is when you pour it out on a surface and it beads up, then
each bead of mercury becomes a little microcosm of the world. And yet the
mercury flows back together into a unity. Well, as a child I had not yet
imbibed the assumptions and the ontology of science. I was functioning
as an alchemist. For me, mercury was this fascinating magical
substance onto which I could project the contents of my mind. And a child
playing with mercury is an alchemist hard at work, no doubt about it.

[...]

Well, what these new technologies
are doing is dissolving
boundaries. The nation state, the monolithic party, and the nuclear
family---all boundary-defined institutions of one sort or another---are
legacies of the past; what we need is an ideology that is mercurial, shifting,
non-static. And as long as we’re talking about mercury and mercurial things,
there is in alchemy (a pre-modern form of thinking) the idea of the Coincidencia
Oppositorum, which means that you have to have ideologies which are
able to accommodate positions which within the context of the previous
ideology would’ve appeared contradictory. The very notion of non-contradiction
is a notion that emerges out of the linear, print-created mindset; the
whole sterility of that world-view is its inability to live with the presence
of contradiction. And so it denies it, which creates the unconscious of
a society where we’ve got serial killers running around. The world is not
as simple as we desperately wish to make it within the context of the linear
world-view.

The most famous alchemist was 16th-century
Philippus Paracelsus of Switzerland, who held that the elements of compound
bodies were salt, sulfur, and mercury, representing, respectively, earth, air,
and water;
fire he regarded as nonmaterial. He believed that one undiscovered element existed
from which the other elements came. He called this prime element alkahest, maintaining
that if it were found, it would be the philosopher's
stone.

When Hans Jenny experimented with
fluids of various kinds he produced wave
motions, spirals, and wave-like patterns in continuous circulation. In his research
with plant spores, he found an enormous variety and complexity, but even so,
there was a unity in the shapes and dynamic developments that arose. With the
help of iron filings, mercury,
viscous liquids, plastic-like substances and gases, he investigated the
three-dimensional aspects of the effect of vibration.

ohm (om),
unit of electrical
RESISTANCE, defined as the resistance to the flow
of a steady electric current offered by a column of mercury 14.4521 grams in
mass with a length of 1.06300 m and with an invariant cross-sectional area,
when at a temperature of 0 degrees centigrade.

bluegrass indie art rock track
_Mercury Snake_ MP3 (160k)
by Old Time Relijiun off of _Witchcraft Rebellion_ on K (2001)